Chekhov had accompany :d Levitan on his hunting trips when they were at Babkino (and even looked after his gun-dog at one point), but he was much keener on fishing, having by then lost the taste for shooting he had when he was younger. Nevertheless, soon after moving to Melikhovo, he had gone out several times into the fields with Levitan just after Easter ш 1892, when the artist came down from Moscow for his first visit. The warm April weather had also suddenly given way to snow again that week, 'ust as in the stoty. Levitan shot a woodcock in the wi lg, and after Chekhov picked it up from the puddle where it had landed, they both looked at its long thin beak, its beautiful plumage and the startled expression in ts large black eyes. Levitan lacked the courage to kill the bird outright, and Chekhov was forced to overcome his distate and do the ob for nim. As he commented the next day n a letter to Suvorin, 'One beautiful loving creature was no longer alive; meanwhile two idiots went home and sat down to supper.'29 The word 'Levitanesque' must have aroused mixed emotions in Chekhov's mind as he thought about the beauties of the Russian spr ig and con' ared up that unseasonably cold Good Friday evening in 'The Student'. The incident later was also famously reflected in The Seagull.
Before his untimely death in 1894, Alexander П1 had made a serious contribution to the development of Yalta as a sophisticated world-class resort, although it cannot be said that he was motivated by altruistic considerations. Unti. 1891, travel to Yalta by steamsh.p invoVed transferring to a small launch in the bay and being ferried to the landing stage. When the imperial family arrived for their annual visit in 1886 the sea was so rough that they had to stay overnight in the. r ship. Alexander promptly ordered the construction of a proper harbour so that vessels could dock right in the town. The increased access provided by the narbour made it possible to supply households in Yalta with running water and a proper sanitation system, and to equip the town's main streets with gas, and then electric, lighting. It was precisely these amenl.. that made Chekhov decide to live there when he became seriously ill.3 New hotels, sanatoriums and shops began to spring up in profusion in Yaita, as well as churches, a theatre, a library and several schools.
It was not until 1898, the year that Chekhov moved down to Yalta permanently, that the new Tsar Nicholas II resumed imperial visits to the Crimea. He and the Empress Alexandra came to regard Massandra as a kind of dacha they could drive over to for brief sojourns while staying at their official residence at Livadia. Yalta was at the height of its popularity at this time, and Nicholas was scathing about the hordes of 'dull people' who crowded the streets whenever the imperial motorcade drove through the town. 'You'd think you were in some big foreign resort,' he complained to his mother in October 1900.31 But that, of course, was exactly the idea. When he first developed Yalta in the 1830s, it seems that the ambitious Count Vorontsov had hoped that his resort would become 'the Cowes of the Crimea, as a station for the yachts of the nobles, and a fashionable bathing-place', as reported by the Rev. Thomas Milner in 1855. This was perhaps not surprising, bearing in mind Vorontsov's upper-class British upbringing, but at that point Milner was forced to conclude that 'the design has not prospered'.32
B> the 1870s, however, Yalta had certainly taken off, although perhaps not in the direction which Vorontsov had intended. To the author oi Murray's Handbook for Travellers in Russia, it seemed that the increasing number of Russian families going to Yalta to bathe 'bids fair to make Yalta the Russian Brighton'. The town's charming situation, excellent port, and proximity to fine scenery also made it seem like a miniature version of Naples.33 But the most frequent comparisons were inevitably made with Nice.34 Yalta's famous seafront promenade may have been a miniature version and pale imitation of the Promenade des Anglais, its clientele less international and its population far smaller, but with its elegant hotels, flowers blossoming in profusion through the winter, and the 'velvet' season drawing scores of princes and princesses, opera singers and actresses every autumn, everyone looked upon it as the Russian Nice. As we have seen, Chekhov also immediately thought of Nice when he first saw Yalta. After hav1'ng spent protracted periods in both places, he formed the opinion thac Yalta was more expensive and nor as interesting, but he liked it more than the French Riviera,35 not least because t was cleaner.36
Chekhov would never have been found in the crowds linmg the streets to catch a glimpse of the imperial fam ly during then lisits to Yalta (his feelings for them were generally of contempt), but his mother was thulled to see the Tsar at the consecration of the new Cathedral of St Alexander Nevsky in December 1902, which she attended by special ticket. Like the Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood in St Petersburg, also built in the pseudo-Russian style favoured by Alexander III, the Yalta cathedral was erected n memory of hie murdered father. Chekhov was at that time so unwell that he had not been down to the centre of town for weeks, but he could hear the deep bass bells from his
house, and they made him feel very homesick for Russia.37
*
II
Chekhov and the Tatars
A week after arriving in Yalta in 1898, Chekhov was taken to see a small red-roofed house that was for a sale m a Tatar village called Kuchuk-koy. The property was situated about twenty miles along the coast towards Balaklava, on a steep ncline not far from the sea. It came with a small tobacco plantation, a vineyard, some wonderful old trees (including pomegranate, fig, olive, walnut) and a splendid sea view from the upstairs balcony. Dreaming of long davs in which he would go and sit on the rocks and fish - he told his brother Ivan to bring hooks and a fishing line when he came to stay - in December he bought it, having already bought a plot of land to build a house on in Yalta itself. It seemed as wild as Africa.38
It was not surprising that Chekhov felt he was living in a foreign country when he was in the Crimea. He was. There was a mosque below the house he built, which was si tuated in a Tatar village, his first gardener was a Tatar called Mustafa, and both the men who came to dig up the old vines on his newly acquired plot wore red fezzes on their heads.39 Even the English Gothic-style dacha he staved in before his house was built was given a Tatar name - 'Omyur', meaning life.40 Chekhov may nave been slightly disparaging about the Tatars when he took in his first superficial view of Yalta as a young man back in 1888, but since then he had been to Sakhabn, had observed at close hand how contemptuously the indigenous population was treated there by the Russian colonists, and was now acutely conscious of a similar dynamic at work in the Crimea, where Tatars were often referred to as Turks, due to the similarity of the language they spoke.
Chekhov found these attitudes abhorrent, and he went out of his way to disassociate himself from the imperialist attiOides of most of his fellow countrymen. As his friend Bunin noted: 'There were many Turks and Caucasians working on the Black Sea coast. Knowing the hostility mingled with contempt which we have for other nationalities in Russia, he would never miss the opportunity of expressing his admiration at how honest and hardworking they were.'4 After coming down to the harbour to meet his mother and sister and their old servant off the steamer St Nikolai in October 1899, Chekhov was horrified to see the ass istant captain strike Mustafa in the face when he went to their cabin to pick up their luggage. The officer was appalled to see a Tatar mingling with the first-class passengers; Chekhov was appalled by the blatant racism.42 The scandalous incident was even reported in the local Yalta newspaper.43 As usual, it is the small details (revealed posthumously n memoirs) that give away feelings Chekhov largely kept to himself. Dur ig his visit to Yalta in 1894, he bad become exasperated with a local journalist who had published a small book on 'Yalta and its Environs'. When Chekhov had encouraged him to write more, the journah.it wondered what more there was to say about a place that was |ust one big sta ion in the summer and a dead provincial town in the winter. Chekhov had suggested he write about the way of life of the Tatars, since he was so lucky to be in the Crimea all year round; he reckoned there must be an interesting legend to tell in each mountain village. It was a topic which had obviously never occurred to the journalist before, and he objected feebly that he did not know the language, to which Chekhov immediately retorted that their mutual acquaintance did, and could probably help, and that knowledge of the language was perhaps not a necessity anyway.44